


I Will Cover You (When the Sky Comes Crashing In)

by ruthenia



Series: since the heart beat is slow [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: F/M, Gen, Lucina finally gets the story of how her parents met, Mother-Daughter Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-27
Updated: 2014-06-27
Packaged: 2018-02-06 05:46:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1846612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruthenia/pseuds/ruthenia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She was your mother too, wasn't she?" </p><p>The tactician has a conversation with her daughter between events at the Table and the second journey to Origin Peak. Endgame spoilers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Will Cover You (When the Sky Comes Crashing In)

**Author's Note:**

> I named my tactician Nereis, which is the name I'll be using instead of Robin. The title is from "World on Fire" by Les Friction, which is my sad & epic Fire Emblem song.

The Shepherds were splitting from the bulk of the army. Chrom and his team would continue to Origin Peak while the rest of their forces marched back home to Ylisse and Regna Ferox. If the Shepherds failed, there was no sense in leaving half the Ylissean army and Regna Ferox's warriors on the Peak as a big, painted target for Grima. They were best used as final lines of defense against the Risen—however long that would last. Lucina and the other children would know, but Nereis hadn't the courage to ask. She would go forward with conviction that they _would_ win.

It hadn't been a tough call, though Nereis could tell the soldiers, albeit with no slight feelings of elation at seeing their homes again, were uneasy at being sent back before the war was truly over. A cavalry knight had approached Nereis personally and begged her to reconsider. _Milady, it is shame incarnate to leave our leaders to fight alone! You and your husband the Exalt are the future of Ylisse!_

Chrom would have been dismayed to learn the people were calling him Exalt. She herself had wondered if it was a title that had died with Emmeryn, but the people had truly put their faith in her younger brother. Nereis had lain one hand on the cavalier's shoulder and told her kindly, but firmly, _Your leaders take this one risk for you. Naga fights at our side._ A white lie, but it would inspire their troops, who all knew the Awakening had been performed. _Chrom will be back at the palace within a week._ She had raised her voice to the small crowd that had gathered around them. _Fear not. The Exalt and I fight together! We fight with the glad responsibility of Ylisse on our backs! Grima's bones will shake the ocean when we are through!_

The soldiers had taken that with a cheer, and Nereis had been pleased to see it, if even more tired. Inspiring speeches were for leaders like Chrom and Flavia, not the people that worked beside them. But she knew what she'd been in for when she had accepted, with hands that Chrom had been good enough not to mention were shaking, the ring of House Ylisse—the combined burden of Queen and tactician. She was a people person. She would rise to the occasion.

Right now, she was busy trying to rise to another occasion altogether. _Motherhood,_ she thought as she headed to the tent Lucina shared with Kjelle, _who knew it would be tougher than the rest of my hats combined?_

 

* * *

 

"Oh, it's you," Kjelle said, and her posture left it ambiguous as to whether she was guarding the tent or happened to be standing casually in front of it.

"Kjelle," Nereis said, because she was no fool.

Kjelle sighed. "Fine, fine," she grumbled, stepping aside and gesturing sharply to the flap of the tent. "I'll be in the mess tent if, um, she needs me. I'm no good at handling this stuff anyway. Hey." She met Nereis's gaze. "I respect you—a lot. She respects you too, and not like I respect Sully. You had a reputation in the future. She _reveres_ you and Chrom. This Grima business—" Nereis was left with no illusions as to what aspect of that business Kjelle was referring to—"it's been hard on her, harder than on the rest of us, maybe. Don't screw this up or you might screw _her_ up."

"Got it."

Kjelle nodded and stumped off to the mess tent. Nereis called, "Say hi to your girlfriend for me."

"Severa might take offense to that term," Kjelle said, raising a hand in acknowledgement as she continued walking. Nereis had no doubts about _might._ "But I will."

Nereis blew out her breath, opened the tent flap, and stepped inside.

The light was dim, an effect of the weak, sputtering flame of the oil lamp. Lucina sat idle next to a wooden table.

"Mother," Lucina said quietly. Nereis saw her eyes were evenly red-rimmed. "Kjelle thought you might come here."

"No intuition of your own?" Nereis asked lightly.

Lucina shook her head, a tiny smile pulling at her lips. "All of that went to Morgan." She looked down at her hands, one of them stained with polish. Glancing to the makeshift table, Nereis glimpsed Lucina's parallel Falchion, gleaming in the flickering low light thrown by the lamp. She must have shined it for an hour to make it look like that. "Mother..."

"Yeah?" Nereis said quietly, settling on the cushion next her daughter. She hesitated, then pulled one of Lucina's hands into her own and squeezed. _She has the same callouses as Chrom._ Nearly overwhelmed, suddenly, by all the things about her daughter she still didn't know and might never get a chance to know, she gave herself a stern reminder than there was room for only _one_ emotionally compromised royal in this tent.

Lucina took a deep breath, then pursed her lips and stared her mother dead in the eye.

 _Here it comes,_ Nereis thought.

"How did you and Father meet?" asked Lucina.

"I—what?"

Lucina repeated her question, her stare unbreaking. "I tried asking him but he—weaseled out of it," she added, sounding typically uncomfortable at maligning her father, even when describing something that sounded exactly like what he'd do.

It wasn't the question Nereis had been expecting, but okay, she was game to answer this. But where to begin? Well—that was easy, she supposed. The answer was right in front of her. "Do you remember the day you appeared from that portal?"

"Of course," Lucina said, grimly. "The day the Risen came to this world. I'd hoped to get here before then, but time travel is unpredictable. Heh."

"What?"

"I certainly hadn't been expecting to fall right on top of my family. Thank the gods Gerome lent me that mask, or you both would have figured out I was your daughter straightaway!"

"Heh heh. Um—about that." Lucina had a few preconceptions Nereis was sorry to break, but if she wanted the full story, it was time to clear the air. "It would have been an absolute shock to both of us."  
  
"A shock?" Lucina asked, frowning. "I know I favor my father, but it must be clear in my features I am related to you, as well. In the future, Aunt Lissa and her family were the ones who looked—"

"That's not quite what I meant, darling." She froze for a moment, thinking Lucina might shun her endearments now, but her daughter was looking at her with confusion, not accusation. Relieved, she continued:  "It would have been a shock that we had a daughter together _at all._ We met a day before you arrived." Not hardly a day, but mothers were allowed to keep _some_ cards close, weren't they?

"A day!" Lucina exclaimed. "You're—" Her eyes narrowed. "You're joking! Having me on!"

Nereis couldn't help herself:  she laughed. It felt good, to laugh. "No, I swear! Chrom found me asleep in a field the morning before. Lissa and Frederick had accompanied him from the city."

Lucina's brow furrowed. "I always thought you met years before I was born," she admitted. "You knew each other so well in the future:  you could both predict each other exactly on even the small matters—when I fought you both in the arena, you were both already completely in sync—Aunt Lissa said you'd been like that always, 'not long' after you met." She groaned. "Oh, I bet she thought that was funny."

"Sounds like Lissa," Nereis agreed. "She wasn't entirely pulling the wool over your eyes. Chrom and I fought our first battle together that day we met. War pulls you close like nothing else, and we were in the thick of it. Kjelle's parents knew each other longer than we did."

"I see. Then—when did you, um, fall for each other?" Lucina's cheeks flushed, and Nereis was happy to see her still capable of a little youthful embarrassment. "When did you decide to marry?"

"Truly, some of this should be Chrom's story to tell, but since he declined..."

Lucina leaned forward, eyes sparkling. "Yes?"

Nereis felt the warm flush of one of her best memories come over her—the nostalgic feeling of her _first_ memory, which felt, dually, like it had been both painted over in soft watercolor and sharpened into stark detail on a grindstone. "Chrom told me just before the attempted assassination on Emmeryn that you interrupted." It felt mildly odd to use their future daughter as a frame of reference for how they got together, but Lucina seemed rapt. "He said he loved me from the moment he saw me in that field. And when he pulled me up by the hand and I nearly fell onto him, that's when I knew, too, although I didn't think of it like that. I thought, _I have to go where he goes. I have to keep him safe._ " She cleared her throat. Now _she_ was the one blushing. "With our positions in the army, we couldn't consider each other seriously until after the war, but I knew I wouldn't consider anyone but Chrom, even if—"

"Even if?"

"Even if it turned out not to be the same for him," Nereis said, turning over Lucina's hand, examining its small scars and marks. Her daughter allowed it. Their hands were near the same size and shape, although Lucina's right hand was almost unnoticeably larger from a lifetime of sword practice. Nereis could handle herself with a sword, but she favored her tomes.  "I said war pulls you close, but sometimes it's all that's holding you together. We had a whirlwind romance, I guess you could say. If what we had was something that kept him going across battles and ended up being nothing more, I told myself I'd be all right with that."

"You wouldn't have been," Lucina countered, gripping her mother's hand hard and making Nereis start. "Neither of you. I can't believe in fate, but you two were meant to find each other. We were meant to be a family. That's what makes—" She gritted her teeth, pulling her hand from Nereis and clenching her fists in her lap. "That's what makes this so damn hard."

And here they were at the crux of the matter. They'd had a nicer discussion so far than Nereis thought possible, but the real topic was now on the table. She could still walk out of this tent one child short. "I know you didn't ask me how your father and I met just because you were curious," she said evenly.

"No one ever could hide anything from you," came Lucina's reply. "I—I lied. In the future, I asked Aunt Lissa how you all met and she really did tell me."

Nereis said, carefully, "But I didn't just tell you the same story."

"Someone else could find the humor in the situation. The first difference made in the past happened a day before I arrived, and as Morgan would say, it might have been the difference that tipped the scale." Lucina's lips thinned. "In my future, you weren't an amnesiac. You were tight-lipped about your past, but no one thought to pester the Queen with too many questions, especially with your strategic track record. Everyone in the halidom knew you and Father were the sole reason Ylisse had come out on top in all the battles we were forced to wage."

"We haven't been the only ones fighting. We've had our friends and allies behind us the whole way."

"But you both were forever the vanguard, always the heart of major strikes," Lucina said. "Just like it is now, I wager. You had to delegate more as you both grew older, but they had a saying in neighboring countries. 'As long as the Exalt and the Grandmaster rule, Ylisse will never fall.' Tall words in times like those."

"The Grandmaster?" Nereis said, nonplussed.

"Your nickname," Lucina said dryly. "Anyone who comes into power gets one eventually. You're lucky yours was so complimentary." Her eyes focused intently on the blank tent canvas, and Nereis felt the discussion rolling back on topic.

"Aunt Lissa said you and Father met on a breezy day in early September, not long before the outbreak of the most recent Plegian war. I _assumed_ it was a few years, but now I think it's the same time frame you spoke of—a few days. You, a complete stranger to anyone in the halidom, had made the brazen request of an audience with Exalt Emmeryn herself, hinting that you had vital information about a skirmish on the border with Plegia. Tensions were still hot from my grandfather's campaigns, so the court couldn't afford to outright send you away, but there was no question of you meeting directly with the Exalt."

"I think I know where this is going."

"Father met you in a study off one of Grandfather's disused war rooms, Frederick hovering over his shoulder. As soon as you were escorted into the room, Frederick started interrogating you, asking who you were, where you were from, what motives you had for warning Ylisse of this 'alleged' skirmish, and more invasive questions.

"You said, of all things, that you were a traveling tactician, that you had been raised in several places abroad but called no land home, and that if Chrom—you said his name with no title, and the way Aunt Lissa told it, Frederick fit to bust—called himself a prince, he would duel you and you could decide if Ylisse was _worthy_ of your information."

"Whoa. I was a bit of a young hothead in your timeline."

"Ha! You and Father fought to a draw, the first tie he'd experienced since he took up Falchion, and you seemed impressed, too, enough to tell Father everything you knew. Apparently you were just looking for a place to lodge for a while and lend your services in exchange; the best way you knew to get a foot in the door was to leverage information."

"But Ylisse didn't stay 'just a place to lodge.'"

"No," Lucina confirmed. "After that duel, you and Father hit it off immediately, and Emmeryn and Aunt Lissa became fond of you as well."

"I always regretted never getting a chance to know Emmeryn." She regretted not being able to save her more, but it would have been nice to know her sister-in-law.

Lucina continued:  "A couple years passed along with the final Plegian war, and you were formally taken into court employ as a tactician. Father introduced you to the Shepherds. I think you fell in love during that duel. I think—I think you were happy, for a while. Your life before you swept into court, I don't think—when I was little, I'd notice you looked really sad sometimes. You'd look at that—that awful mark on your hand and stare at it until someone broke you out of your doldrums. I think you knew what you were, and that time with us was just a—a sweet dream you knew would end one day."

Fat tears were rolling down Lucina's face and choking her until she could hardly speak. "I think you loved me and Father both. And Emmeryn, and Aunt Lissa, and her family, and Frederick. You loved us o-once. I have to believe that. I can't—"

"Oh, Lucina," Nereis whispered. Hot tears of her own were falling fast from her eyes until Lucina was a sobbing blur. "My double we met at the Table. She was your mother too, wasn't she? She was your mother—from your timeline."

With Nereis's words, Lucina's feelings all rushed out. "She never tried to change her fate! Gods, maybe that's what she wanted all along. Godhood must have been too tempting. She chose Grima over her own damned family! _You chose him over me_!" she screamed. "You came back into the past to prevent your daughter from saving _her own family_!" Lucina took several deep, gasping breaths, and looked at Nereis with—she couldn't lie to herself—the hate of a destroyed world and a broken family.

"The irony of it all is that she's the one who definitively changed the timeline. She made a mistake and took away your memory—while you must have been on your way to the Ylissean court. You had no recollection of who you had been, so you were free to choose who you were going to be. I envy what the weightlessness of no destiny must feel like."

There were too many and too few responses Nereis could make to that bitterness, that well-deserved hatred, the betrayed eyes of her daughter. And then there was the truth. Nereis wiped away the trembling remnants of her tears from the corner of her eye, and, in a voice probably shakier than she would like, said,  "I remembered one thing, Lucina."

"What?" Lucina shook her head. "Your _name_?"

"That fact came a little later, darling." Cue the flinch she'd been expecting, but Nereis went on strong. "I had my first vision of the future past while I slept in that field. I dreamt of Chrom and me fighting Validar at the Table—alone, without the Shepherds. I don't think I was as close with them in your future."

"You weren't," Lucina said, cautiously. "You fought on the field with them, but you were never one of them. They weren't your friends."

"Your father didn't fall in love with me when I opened my eyes, Lucina," Nereis said softly. "He fell in love with me when I smiled at him—slowly, sweetly. I smiled at him, and I said his name before I knew my own, because even with only that one battle to remember him by, I remembered how much I had loved him in another lifetime. How much I loved our family—even if I was robbed of their faces—and the whole of a nation. And that's the feeling I took with me into the new life I ended up giving myself. Whether it was an accident or not."

Lucina looked fit to cry again. _This is what happens when you keep it all in, all the time, my darling girl._ Nereis stopped herself from reaching out. It wouldn't be a welcome gesture. "You think—you think you did it on purpose? You changed yourself on purpose?"

"I'll be honest with you." No matter how many deceptions she put into play to trap her enemies or lies she spread to keep her allies at full strength, she strove to always be honest with her family, a quality her other self seemed to have lacked. "It's just a hunch. I'm betting future-past me didn't tell anyone about the headaches or visions she was receiving from slumbering Grima. Maybe she was ashamed, or she wanted to keep living the other life she'd chosen as long as possible. I can't know thoughts I'll never have. But I know what she felt in the last moments she had with Chrom before she—she killed him. After that, I can't say for certain, but...

"I'm a magic-user, one of the best on the continent, I'd wager. Without knowing the specifics, since time travel is, unsurprisingly, a largely undocumented field, I would know damn well there would be severe consequences for attempting to merge two selves. There's no ritual. It would have just been raw power flung into being. Amnesia is only one of the possible effects from that kind of reckless desperation—and I think I knew that. I think what was left of me inside Grima was betting on it. If she didn't succeed in destroying her past self, there was a chance she could make her past self forget. And maybe _that_ would change things." Nereis quirked a sad smile at Lucina.

"Maybe Chrom could have had a life with someone else that didn't end in his death by her hand. And he could have had little Lucina with a mother who could be there for her until the end of her days."

Lucina burst out, "I—I wouldn't have wanted anyone but you for my mother," and flung herself into Nereis's arms.

They were sobbing again and getting snot on each other's shoulders, but having Lucina in her arms felt even better than laughing.

 

* * *

 

 "What's all that racket?" Severa complained. "Sounds like it's coming from the soldiers' tents. Is that _crying_?"

"For propping yourself up as a lady, you sure shovel food into your mouth at an alarming rate," said Kjelle, who felt suddenly relieved.

"S-see if I ever agree to marry you again, you big oaf!"

"There won't _be_ a next time, Severa," Kjelle said, pulling a blustering, blushing Severa against her side. "That's kind of the point, or so I've gathered. I knew that even without your etiquette lessons."

"Your armor is cold," Severa mumbled.

"Shut up and eat your peas before _they_ go cold." And if Kjelle was smiling, she was careful to hide it from her fiancée.

 

* * *

 

 "You're taking the final blow against Grima, aren't you?" Lucina asked, clear-eyed, perhaps an hour before they reached Origin Peak. She had been marching alongside her family the whole of the morning. Chrom and Morgan had fallen back to speak with the convoy leader on some matter or another, Chrom looking relieved that his daughter and his wife had settled whatever had been brewing between them.

Nereis sighed. "Not a dull eye in your head, is there?"

"I must get it from someone," Lucina said slyly. She frowned. "I overheard you and Father. You both want Grima destroyed, obviously, but he plans on putting the dragon to sleep with Falchion—since you'd have to disappear to destroy it for good."

"I know you couldn't have eavesdropped _this_ ," said Nereis, "so it should be fresh news to you that I planned on sacrificing Emmeryn in Plegia had the decision not been taken out of my hands. Like I told Chrom, one life for millions, present and future? It's no choice at all, like it wasn't then." 

"Part of me understands," Lucina said, looking up and ahead to the great shadow of Grima, casting darkness over the ocean. " _Really_ understands. The other part of me doesn't want to lose one of her parents so soon after I met her again."

"I know. And—I'm sorry. I wish it could be otherwise. I don't want to leave you a second time. If I can return, Lucina—" Nereis took her daughter's hand in hers and raised it between them, gripping it hard enough to hurt. "—I'll return to you."

Lucina smiled—not sweetly, or softly, but the beatific smile of a woman who had gone to war in two different lifetimes and still had hope. "Okay. I'll look for you. And I'll take care of Father and Morgan until you get back."

"I'd ask Gerome to make you a new mask. Your mark of the Exalt is pretty tell-tale."

"Yes, I'll hardly know what to do with myself once this is over. I can't become Queen now—that's little Lucina's birthright—unless I made it back to my own time—if it exists at all, and if it does, it would be so changed..."

"Ask Naga," Nereis said. "She'll have counsel. And remember you're always welcome here," she added gently. "A princess isn't all that you are. I bet one of our companions would be willing to make plans with you. You could even see the world like you couldn't in your own time."

"That's an idea not without merit," Lucina allowed. "I'll—think about it. Hey, Mother?"

Nereis turned around, looking curiously at Lucina, who had stopped in the middle of the road. The Shepherds marched around them. Severa gave them a scrutinizing look.

"Yes?" Nereis asked.

Lucina smiled—a simple, uncomplicated smile. "I love you."

**Author's Note:**

> I unintentionally made my tactician have similar coloring to Chrom and Lucina (way before I decided on S supports), which is the reason behind Lucina's comment about Lissa being the red-headed stepchild.


End file.
